Businessman and former journalist Peter Barnes for years has been pushing an idea for developing climate change legislation that would be popular among average Americans.
His plan, which he calls "cap and dividend," would make companies pay for their greenhouse gas emissions by buying allowances in auctions, and then would divide the proceeds from the auctions among Americans. Alaska uses a similar plan for sharing oil royalties with residents.
Barnes' idea may be catching on: Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), co-chairman of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, introduced a version of it as legislation last week.
"When you put a price on something that wasn't priced before, you're creating a whole new money flow," said Barnes, who has written about how the economic system fails to protect human resources. "Over the years, it could come to trillions of dollars. So every interest group in America is interested in that. So the idea of giving the money back to the people is unpopular here in Washington, but outside Washington I think it's very popular."
Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund and an architect of a detailed cap-and-trade program, disagrees. Pricing carbon emissions will target coal-intensive regions more than others, he said. "I think you have to have at least a transition period of many years, a decade or so, to give regions of the country the opportunity to move to non-polluting sources," Krupp said (Steven Mufson, Washington Post, April 8). -- TL
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